India's lowest slowly rising

Some find a way out of the most miserable work imaginable and into a life beyond the bounds of caste

March 01, 2006|By Kim Barker, Tribune foreign correspondent.

ALWAR, India — Lalita Daberia rolled the small balls of dough into thin, flat circles, one after the other. She took pride that people would eat what she made.

Because most of her life, other villagers crossed the street when they saw her. She was born into her job, one that no one else wanted--picking up people's garbage and cleaning out their toilets, open pits not connected to sewers. Every day she heard calls of "scavenger, scavenger, clean my toilet." And she did, carrying away human waste in a shallow iron pan on her head. Now her life is changing.

"This is hard work," said Daberia, a rolling pin in her hands. "But that was dirty work. I used to feel sick, nauseous. I used to vomit all the time."

When President Bush visits India beginning Wednesday, he will focus on the new, modern India--the growing economy, the high-tech industry and partnerships between the two countries. Daberia lives in the old India, mired in poverty and divided by caste.

Small revolution

But now, Daberia and 27 other women from her caste in Alwar have joined a small revolution with big implications. The women are being trained to leave the work that they and their families have performed for generations.

These women are part of the so-called "scavengers," near the bottom of the bottom rung of the Indian caste system, a group known as Dalits. Indian law guarantees equality for everyone, yet Dalits, once called "untouchables," still are treated poorly in many rural areas of the country. Historically, people of higher castes would not touch women such as Daberia. They certainly would never eat food made by Daberia.

But now, she and the other women are about to become the first graduates of a novel program that trains them to embroider clothing and to make and sell food--the crispy Indian snack known as papad and pickles. With a social service agency's help, the women already are selling as many as 750 packets of papad a month, in fancy hotels, markets and door to door.

Most customers may not know that they are buying a symbol of change in India--the only clue is in the packaging, which says simply "for a cause" and "prepared & distributed by women groups working for their emancipation."

Bindeshwar Pathak, who started Sulabh International, devoted to liberating scavengers, said most people in India cannot believe that one-time scavengers are now selling food.

"Because this is a totally unacceptable thing in society," Pathak said. "I myself am not able to believe it."

He started Sulabh--the word means "easy" in Hindi--in 1970, devoted to the ideals of Mohandas Gandhi, considered the father of India, who believed scavenging must be abolished. Sulabh invented a new kind of two-pit toilet, which did not have to be cleaned by hand.

Since then Sulabh has trained 60,000 scavengers for new work, installed toilets in 1.2 million homes and set up 7,500 pay-to-use community toilet facilities with 10 to 150 toilets each.

But the program in Alwar, a city of 275,000 about 80 miles southwest of New Delhi, marks the first time that scavengers have been trained to make and sell food.

The women here say they never questioned their fate. Few went to school. Most started cleaning toilets and picking up garbage when they were in their early teens, after marriage. Each carried an iron pan on her head and a broom in her hand. Each cleaned a specific area--a block of 25 or 30 houses. For this work, the women made $11 to $22 a month.

"My mother used to fight with me," said Daberia, who started cleaning up human waste about 35 years ago, when she was 15. "She said, `If you don't work, how will you eat?' I never refused my mother."

This class of 28 started in April 2003; since then, many of the women have learned basic reading. They opened bank accounts and learned to write checks.

The women once earned a stipend of $40 a month through Sulabh. But that is ending, and soon the women will earn their own money by selling food and clothing. A new group of 50 women will start training in April.

Most class members say their favorite task is rolling the papads, made of lentils and spices. They like the idea of making food for people who once shunned them. But the women will not try to sell food to the houses they once cleaned. They are too shy, too afraid. So they trade neighborhoods--one woman will sell to another's former customers.

"I suspect if I go to my houses to sell, they'll say the scavenger woman has come," Daberia said.

600,000 scavengers

Much more needs to be done, Pathak said. About 600,000 people still clean up human waste in India, including Daberia's niece, Krishna. One recent morning, Krishna, 19, who like many Indians has only one name, carried her iron pan on her hip, followed by her mother-in-law, who taught her the job.

At one house, Krishna waited for a man to finish using the bathroom--a hole over a waste container--before walking inside and picking up the waste. She earns $1.32 a month for cleaning this toilet, or 22 cents for every family member.

Her job has changed as new toilets have come to Alwar. Sulabh has installed 4,000 toilets in people's homes and nine public-toilet sites in Alwar, officials said. Only 400 toilets that need to be cleaned by hand remain. So now, Krishna is doing more sweeping.

"It's a good thing flush toilets have come," Krishna said. "Because it is hell cleaning those toilets."

But it is clear that not everything has changed. As Krishna cleaned the toilet, a man from the neighborhood shouted at people taking pictures of her.

"You cannot send those pictures out to the world," Rakesh Kumar complained. "After all, who will clean our toilets if they stop?"